Follow in William O. Douglas' footsteps from Yakima to the wilderness

As a boy, Douglas hiked the foothills outside town to strengthen his polio-stricken legs. As an adult, he kept a cabin at Goose Prairie nearer to Mount Rainier, and camped, fished, hunted, hiked and rode throughout Washington's southern Cascades. He nearly died in a horseback riding accident at Chinook Pass in 1949.

"It is only by foot that one can really come to know the nation," Douglas wrote in his autobiography, "Go East, Young Man." While serving on the Supreme Court, Douglas led hikes in the 1950s and 1960s that built political support for preserving wilderness areas, including the Olympic National Park beaches and the Glacier Peak Wilderness in Washington.

"Those hills gave him physical and emotional strength and a deep love of nature," his widow, Cathleen Douglas Stone, said in June during the centennial celebration for the monumental stone courthouse renamed for her husband, who served on the Supreme Court for 36 years and died in 1980.

The new route links a series of existing trails, passing from historical city sites to remote wilderness, says Ray Paolella, head of the William O. Douglas Trail Foundation. In 2005, Paolella walked the entire path in four days.

The trail won't be fully signed for years, and some of the Yakima-area segments still need to be linked, but they are all hikable now and people can get from one segment to the other with some resourcefulness.

View full sizeYakima Valley MuseumWilliam O. Douglas, here on a 1949 Mount Stuart climb with Mount Rainier as backdrop, was an avid hiker.

One long stretch from Snow Mountain Ranch, 15 miles west of Yakima, to Jumpoff Lookout offers broad vistas of the city, the grasslands, the forests and meadows, Rimrock Lake and the mountains. Farther west, the path crosses the William O. Douglas Wilderness and follows the ancient Yakama-Cowlitz Pass Indian Trail used by Natives to travel between Puget Sound and the Yakima Valley to trade blankets, berries and salmon.

Much of the route is little changed from the time Douglas walked it -- even some of the human elements. In his autobiography, Douglas described meeting and talking with Depression-era hobos while hiking near the railroad bridge spanning the Naches River just outside Yakima. In June, Paolella and Douglas Stone hiked that same stretch, and met and talked with the recent recession-era homeless people living there.

Since Paolella's foundation launched the trail effort in 2005, the organizers, now including the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy, have faced many logistical hurdles in their quest to get the route designated as a National Recreational Trail. The various trail segments lie on land held by different public and private owners, and even minor changes, such as erecting trail markers, require regulatory clearance. Linking the sections has required delicate negotiations with private landowners skeptical about hikers crossing their property, and the national designation is a ways off.

In June the organizers introduced six usable sections on the eastern end. Here are some highlights:

Downtown Yakima to the Naches River: This two-mile stretch starts at Davis High School, from which Douglas, who grew up poor and fatherless, graduated as valedictorian in 1916 before heading off to Whitman College in Walla Walla and later Columbia University Law School. An expressive statue of a restless, windblown Douglas stands in the school courtyard. The trail passes the nearby federal courthouse, where Douglas issued several controversial rulings in the 1970s, including declaring the U.S. bombing of Cambodia illegal. It also passes the former site of his childhood home, where a mural of the house has been placed. Hikers can follow young Douglas' footsteps over the railroad bridge crossing the river and up Selah Ridge.

Cowiche Creek Canyon: The three-mile span is a level path following an old railroad bed that crosses the creek nine times on footbridges as it winds through the basalt-walled canyon. The trail joins with uplands trails that climb the hillside. Another linked trail ascends to two scenically located winery tasting rooms and vineyards -- Wilridge Winery and Naches Heights Vineyard.

Box Spring Canyon: This four-mile path climbs 900 feet through open shrub steppe country, leading to a dramatic view of the canyon.

Farther west, the Douglas route follows established national forest and wilderness trails. You'll come to Kloochman Rock, a grueling climb that terrified Douglas when he was 15; Indian Creek, where a Yakama Indian taught Douglas how to spear salmon; and Cowlitz Pass, where Douglas camped with a shepherd and read him news of the outbreak of World War I.